


Howard Stark's Secret Weapon

by LadyReisling



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Anna, Hand-wavey Science, Mission Fic, Missions Gone Wrong, Multi, Post-Season/Series 02, Sharing a Bed, Sleepy Cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-03 03:18:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6594529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyReisling/pseuds/LadyReisling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Peggy returns from a mission gone wrong, Ana shares a secret past and an ingenious solution to a field agent's worst nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Howard Stark's Secret Weapon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DoreyG](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/gifts).



> For ShipSwap, DoreyG prompted Ana Jarvis as an escaped Black Widow, which was just too good a prompt to pass up. At the same time, I read a fantastic book about military science, did some Google searches that might have landed me on a watchlist, and came up with rain, a goat, and some science-y handwaving. Thanks for the great prompt!

A week into investigating the facility just below the California border in Mexico, Peggy couldn’t really say which was worse: the rain, or the junior agent who wasn’t worth his salt. Reports had indicated that the scientists working in the compound might be dangerously close to replicating Dr. Erskine’s formula. Rose, the third member of their team, was on the inside undercover as a secretary, and her surveillance disproved that theory, but the point remained that the facility was crawling with Leviathan goons. After four days, they had identified all the key players and were prepared to neutralize the threat, which left Peggy and Agent Jenkins waiting for their moment. Which, boring as it was, wouldn’t have been so terrible, but Jenkins was…well, _worthless_ was the first word that came to mind. Twitchy as all hell and with all the silent-movement skills of an overgrown rhino to boot, not to mention that he had no use for being commanded by a woman. 

To make matters worse, a rare cold rainstorm had blown in off the ocean, pounding them relentlessly for the last two days. Soaked to the skin, lying in wait in the mud and freezing almost made Peggy nostalgic for the mud of the Eastern front and the Commandos by her side. 

“Jenkins,” Peggy hissed as the man shifted next to her yet again, sending yet another rock bouncing loudly down the cliffside. “You give us away and so help me, they’ll never find your body.”

“Are you threatening me, Carter?” the man sneered, not bothering to keep his voice down. 

Peggy winced at how the sound carried in the rain. _How had this cretin even managed to pass his field assessments? _But before she tell him just how real the threat was, a herd of goats that had been grazing nearby got curious, coming closer to investigate them. She froze in place as the animals approached, keeping her eyes on the compound. Jenkins, of course, didn’t have the word “freeze” in his vocabulary, and loosed a shattering shriek as one of the animals sniffed at his neck.__

__Time slowed for a split second in which Peggy knew their cover was blown, and then the hillside erupted into chaos and gunfire. Belly-down in the mud, her brain calculated as quickly as her fingers were on the inside zippered pocket that encased her pistol. Two snipers, maybe three, on the roof at her ten o’clock. The zipper stuck fast, jammed with mud particles. The more she tugged at it, the more it stuck. Behind her, Jenkins was still beating off the goats. Maybe he hadn’t even noticed that they were taking fire, she realized. In any case, he wasn’t going to be any help at all. They were screwed, unless…_ _

__Quickly, Peggy wriggled around and hitched up the leg of her trousers, fingers closing around the cold, miraculously dry steel of the backup pistol she’d stashed in Ana Jarvis’ garter-holster. Three quick shots later, the hillside was quiet again except for the bleating of goats.  
__

Peggy couldn’t help herself. She backhanded the sniveling junior agent across the face, then turned on her heel to abandon their post. Perhaps he did have some sense of self-preservation after all, because he stayed silent while they extracted Rose, made sure the threat was neutralized, and throughout the long ride home.

__The debrief was hell. They were never fun, but this one was especially hellish, because she was still soaked, still caked in mud, and it could have been over in one sentence: _Mud and goats and imbecilic junior agents damn near got us killed_. It was some comfort that, from the look on the Chief’s face, Jenkins wouldn’t see another mission for a long, long time. _ _

__Peggy intended to buy Ana the best whiskey she could find. As soon as she got out of this godforsaken debrief, took a hot bath, and slept for a week._ _

__“Good work out there, Carter,” Chief Sousa’s voice broke through her train of thought, and Peggy realized belatedly that the meeting was finally over. She dragged her mind back to the SSR debriefing room as he continued. “Go home. Take a bath. Sleep it off. In fact, take the day tomorrow. You look like hell.”_ _

__“Thanks, Chief.”_ _

__It wasn’t protocol to wear tactical gear outside of missions, but after three days of mud and no sleep, Peggy couldn’t bring herself to care. She stopped briefly at her desk to pull on a long jacket against the chill that seemed to have seeped into her bones, then stepped outside, not surprised at all to see Mr. Jarvis in the woody waiting for her at the curb._ _

__“Miss Carter,” he greeted as she pulled open the door and slid in beside him._ _

__“Mr. Jarvis.”_ _

__“I trust your mission was a success?”_ _

__“After a fashion. I owe Ana a bottle of whiskey.”__

“I’d ask why, but I assume it’s classified. Ana will be happy to see you in any case. Do you need anything, or shall we just get you home?” Concern laced his voice, but he knew better than to comment further. 

__“Home, please, Mr. Jarvis. And don’t worry about me; it’s nothing a good hot bath and a cup of tea won’t fix.”_ _

__“Of course, Miss Carter.” He briefly lifted her hand to his lips before putting the car into gear, and she allowed herself to slip into a doze, rousing only when the crunch of gravel under the tires told her they had arrived at Stark Manor._ _

__Peggy was barely out of the car before Ana had wrapped her in a signature Ana Jarvis bear hug, and she didn’t fight the contact. Hugging Ana was just natural now, and she inhaled all the scents of home—tea, apple torte, furniture polish. The soft sounds of Benny Goodman played through an open window, and she could have relaxed into Ana’s slight frame and stayed there forever, but practicality pulled her away. “I’m filthy and I smell like goats and gunpowder. Hug me later, after I’ve had a bath.”_ _

__Ana just pulled Peggy tighter and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Nonsense. We’re always too glad to see you home and safe, no matter what state you’re in when you get here. Come inside.”_ _

__An hour later, clean and dressed in fresh clothes, hair cascading in damp curls over her shoulders, Peggy sat on the edge of her bed, sorting through her kit to see what would need to be replaced when she returned to work. Picking up the damp, muddy tactical jacket that she’d discarded on the floor, a fresh wave of frustration welled up in her chest as her fingers brushed the mud-caked zipper, the hard outline of the pistol trapped in the inside pocket. The most brilliant minds in the world worked in the SSR lab, but one bad rainstorm could still trump all their work, and it had nearly cost lives. The offending zipper was still stuck fast, jammed with dirt. It would take hours of cleaning to unstick it. If she didn’t lose patience and just cut the damn thing first._ _

__“Peggy?” Ana’s lilting voice accompanied a soft knock at the door. “May I come in? I brought you a cup of tea.”_ _

__“Sure, Ana.” Rising from the bed, Peggy tossed the jacket over the back of a chair and accepted the steaming cup. “Thanks.”_ _

__“Of course. Truly, Peggy, how are you? I can see this mission was harder than you would say in front of Edwin.”_ _

__“I’m fine. Physically, anyway. But things…went wrong that I couldn’t control. Technical things, and tactical things.”_ _

__“Even you can’t control all the variables, Agent Carter. Do you want to talk about it, or is it classified?”_ _

__In spite of herself, Peggy couldn’t stop a small smile. Ana seemed to have an innate understanding of fieldwork that never failed to surprise her, and always knew the right thing to say. It was so exactly like Steve, it was uncanny. “I owe you a bottle of whiskey, actually. My zipper jammed, and I couldn’t get to my pistol. If I hadn’t had your garter with my backup, things would have ended very differently.”_ _

__“Your _zipper_? Why on earth does the SSR send you into the field with weapons in zippered pockets? It’s a wonder you haven’t all died!” Ana grabbed Peggy’s tactical jacket from the chair and stared at it incredulously. “ _This_ is your field uniform?” The lilting accent became stronger, dripping anger and scorn. _ _

__“Ana, whatever is the matter? Yes, that is my field uniform. It’s the best the SSR has to offer, but not without its flaws.”_ _

__Instead of answering, Ana slipped into a tirade that went on for several minutes and mixed at least four languages. Peggy picked up Russian, German, Hungarian, and something that might have been Polish before stopping the cacophony with a hand on Ana’s arm._ _

__“Ana, dear. One language at a time, please. I’m simply too tired to keep up at the moment.”_ _

__“Peggy, this gear could get you killed. Zippers are cumbersome and jam at inopportune times. What’s more, the noise they make could blow a cover! Why does the SSR still use them?”_ _

__“I imagine every improvement is still in development, but in the meantime, we work with what we have. And how do you know so much about what happens to clothing in the field?”_ _

__Ana’s eyes took on a faraway look, and she paused, as if trying to decide what to say. “There’s more to me than meets the eye, Miss Carter. More than even Edwin knows.”_ _

__“Any secrets you have are safe with me.”_ _

__Ana shook her head. “This is more than just a secret. I was born in Russia and raised in…a special program. A school, you might call it, but they taught us far more than serving tea and being proper young ladies. We learned…to earn people’s trust, gather information. It wasn’t a nice place.”_ _

__A memory flashed through Peggy’s mind, of cold cinder blocks and iron bedsteads with shackles, Disney cartoons with subliminal messages. Junior Juniper bleeding from a fatal wound inflicted by a girl no more than twelve. “Leviathan,” she whispered, and Ana nodded._ _

__“Yes. Black Widows, they called us. There was a division for boys, too, and they called them Wolf Spiders. Trained killers and spies. We learned how to hurt people, how to make a kill quick and clean and make it look like an accident, and how to kill slowly with the highest degree of pain.”_ _

__“But you got out,” Peggy said quietly._ _

__“Yes. I don’t quite understand the science, but their brainwashing didn’t quite take on me. Edwin found me in Hungary when he was there with Mr. Stark. He forged the papers and brought me to the States. I was lucky. Others were not.”_ _

__“Oh, Ana. I’m so sorry.”_ _

__“I am here now, Peggy. I am safe. I have a home and a man who loves me. And most importantly, I know that zippers are a field agent’s worst enemy. I could teach the SSR lab a few lessons.”_ _

__“How much does Edwin know?”_ _

__“As much as he needs to know. I’m not always truthful with him, but I am always honest.”_ _

__“He once said the same of you. You’re a formidable woman, Ana Jarvis.”_ _

__“So now you know that I am capable of keeping state secrets if I must. And I will see how I can improve this atrocity. Not only is it potentially deadly, it’s a disgrace to fashion.”_ _

__That evening, Edwin served up a welcome-home dinner of all Peggy’s favorites, forcing second and third helpings upon her, even though she was stuffed after the first one. They finished with warm scones topped with raspberry jam and clotted cream, and Peggy leaned back in her chair and reveled in the trappings of home with her two favorite people in the world, grateful to have a safe place to land after a hard mission. She didn’t know if life could be perfect without Steve, but this was close enough for now. When Edwin rose to clear the dishes, Peggy stood to help, but he kissed her softly on the cheek and waved her off._ _

__“Now, now. You’ve been away. Let me take care of this.”_ _

__Ana chuckled, cuffing her husband lightly on the shoulder. “You couldn’t clean up to his satisfaction anyway, Peggy dear. And you and I have more important work to do, if you’re not too tired.”_ _

__“What’s this work then?” Edwin asked._ _

__“Never you mind, my love. Go on and clean up, since you won’t let Peggy help.”_ _

__“Only if you promise not to get up to too much mischief without me,” he replied, the barest pout on his lips, eyes gleaming with fun._ _

__“We wouldn’t do that, would we, Peg?”_ _

__“No, of course not. Not without you, Mr. Jarvis.”  
As Edwin retreated to the kitchen, Ana took Peggy’s hand and led her to the sealed door of Howard’s lab, where she expertly picked the lock and flicked on the lights before laying Peggy’s tac jacket out on a table and studying it with a critical eye. Peggy barely had time to register just how much she had underestimated the other woman before Ana was muttering darkly under her breath in Russian. _ _

__“Zippers and buttons,” she stated in English, and Peggy was grateful, her mind still too tired to automatically translate foreign languages at speed. “A technical disaster. Noise that can blow a cover, closures that jam, and ready-made projectile weapons in the wrong circumstances. And what is this fabric?” She fingered it. “At a touch, I’d say…wool, mixed with linen. Disaster. The whole thing needs to be scrapped.”_ _

__“We can sacrifice it to science, as long as you get my gun out of that pocket first.”_ _

__Ana went over to a nearby drawer and extracted a blade, cutting easily through the fabric that trapped the weapon and pulling it out. “This is soaked. Unusable, even if you could have gotten to it.”_ _

__“Clearly you know your way around this room.”_ _

__“I’ve been sneaking down and playing around ever since we relocated here. Not everything they taught me in Russia was bad, and it’d be a shame to let the useful parts go to waste.”_ _

__“Does Edwin know?”_ _

__“He knows now,” said Edwin from the door. “But what he really wants to know is…” He trailed off, staring at the mutilated garment on the table. “That’s Mr. Stark’s original design!”_ _

__“’Mr. Stark’s original design’ almost got Peggy killed. I’m going to improve it. Now, what is it that you really want to know?” Ana asked._ _

__“Why you didn’t invite me,” Edwin replied petulantly. “And as for the design, the SSR used the wrong fabric for it. They cut corners. It’s their fault, not Mr. Stark’s.”_ _

__“Even if it was manufactured exactly to Mr. Stark’s specifications, it wouldn’t work in the field, and the SSR should know that,” Ana countered._ _

__“Howard Stark has the best mind in America, perhaps in the world, but he’s never worked in the field. And the lab boys…well, sometimes I wonder about them,” Peggy put in on a yawn. She made her way over to a lab stool and sank onto it, resting her head in her hands. After a moment, she felt Edwin’s fingers combing lightly through her hair._ _

__“We should get you to bed,” he suggested softly, as though not wanting to rouse her from her sudden trance-like state._ _

__“I just need a moment,” she protested. “Besides, Ana turns out to have a mind to rival Howard’s. That’s worth staying up for.”_ _

__“My mind will be as sharp in the morning, dearie,” Ana said, coming over to join them. “Sharper, even, because neither Edwin nor I sleep well when you aren’t with us.”_ _

__Before Peggy could respond, Edwin had gathered her up in his arms and carried her up to their room, setting her gently on the bed. She was suddenly very aware of how exhausted she was, and it felt like heaven. Ana undressed her like a doll, eased her back, brushed her hair out on the pillow. The last thought before sleep took her was that she was safe, her head cushioned on Ana’s shoulder and Edwin’s hands gently running up and down her spine. Spooned between the two of them, free of tension and irritation for the first time since leaving for the mission, she slept too deeply for dreams._ _

__By the time Peggy woke the next morning, Edwin had breakfast waiting for her, then he shooed her down to the lab, where Ana was already hard at work. She glanced up from her microscope long enough to greet Peggy with a broad smile and throw some fabric samples at her._ _

__“Silk, like a parachute,” Ana stated simply. “Start with good material, and the rest just falls into place. Back in Russia, we had chemicals to make it both waterproof and flame-retardant. The Americans are still trying to isolate them, but Leviathan found them right before the start of the war.”_ _

__Peggy felt the fabric in her hand—feather-light and cool to the touch, sliding through her fingers like a waterfall. “Have you ever considered tagging on to Mr. Stark’s contract with the SSR, Ana? This is years ahead of what our lab has going right now.”_ _

__Ana shook her head. “I would give Mr. Stark a few tips if he asked for them, but I’m content to be Edwin’s wife and do a bit of private designing for my favorite agent.”_ _

__“If it’s all the same to you, I might put the bug in Stark’s ear to listen to you when he gets back to town. So what’s the plan?”_ _

__“I found a bolt of parachute silk in Mr. Stark’s stash, just the same shade as that abomination you’ve been wearing in the field. We’ll treat that with the chemicals, I’ll take your measurements, and we’ll have a new uniform for you in no time. And then Edwin and I will rest much easier when you have to go away.”_ _

__Ana was as good as her word. By the end of the third day, Peggy’s new tactical jacket was finished, and it was a technical marvel. Sleek and formfitting, it closed up the sides with a series of hooks that allowed for both easy removal and silent belly-crawling. Tiny, concealed pockets kept an arsenal in easy reach, but as promised, the fabric was completely resistant to both water and flame, which Ana had demonstrated for Peggy, Edwin, and a very impressed Howard Stark the night before. Wet, inaccessible pistols would no longer be a concern._ _

__Chief Sousa was just as impressed as Howard had been, and immediately ordered a set of specifications for new jackets for all his agents. When Peggy and her team headed out next, things went flawlessly and she wasn’t even bothered by days of rain. The new jackets worked wonders, fending off heat and flame and mosquitoes and water, and the mission finished with Peggy neutralizing a target with a single shot from a perfectly-dry weapon._ _

__After the debrief, Edwin drove her home, and Ana once again welcomed her with a bear hug._ _

__“I’ve been thinking,” Ana said as they finally pulled away. “The only way to repair whatever damage Leviathan did to me is to use they gave me against them. I don’t want to work for the SSR directly, but Howard has taken some tips from me, and I think I’ll keep tinkering in the lab with his permission. We’re working on a few more improvements for uniforms. He likes what I did with your jacket.”_ _

__Peggy grinned, pride and love for the other woman bubbling up inside her chest. “You’re Howard Stark’s secret weapon.”_ _

__“Exactly. And I like it that way.” Taking Peggy by the arm, she led her into the house, where tea was waiting._ _

**Author's Note:**

> Nerdy fact: US military-issue sniper uniforms do in fact close at the sides with hooks and eyes for all the reasons that Ana lists for Peggy. The chemicals that make the fabric hydrophobic and flame-retardant were discovered in the 1950s and came into common use in the 1960s, so I just played a little bit of fast and loose with Leviathan's military science. Thanks for reading! Comments are love!


End file.
